Meet Zoe, the virtual assistant of the future

Virtual assistants could become a familiar sight in offices and on home
gadgets after researchers at Cambridge University unveil the first interactive
digital face capable of displaying a range of emotions.

At first glance, the creation looks like the stuff of science fiction, but it is, in fact, very real.

Researchers spent several days recording the speech and facial expressions of former Hollyoaks actress Zoe Lister, before creating the lifelike figure, which generates voice and facial expressions from typed text.

The new system, called "Zoe," has six basic settings – happy, sad, tender, angry, afraid and neutral. It can combine those emotions to create hundreds of others, and could be used as a digital assistant for smartphones or face messaging.

Professor Roberto Cipolla, from Cambridge University's department of engineering, said: "This technology could be the start of a whole new generation of interfaces which make interacting with a computer much more like talking to another human being."

It is hoped that users will eventually be able to personalise the head with their own faces and voices and that the technology will also be used to help autistic and deaf children to read emotions and lip-read.